Nei Gong Notes, March 2, 2021

This week started off rough: bad sleep, and then there was an issue at our HOA that I had to deal with because I’m a board member this year that kept me worrying for a couple of days, which didn’t help at all. But on Friday night, my sleep was as good as it had been for a while, and it’s continued to be good enough every night since then, so that’s nice: I’ve been able to do some Dantian Gong each day for the last four days, which is good because I want to up my practice there.

Speaking of sleep, this week’s lesson from Damo was Shui Gong, which is about an exercise to do before going to sleep. So I’ve been trying that out; on the one hand, my sleep has been going well, but on the other hand, I don’t get much of a feeling from the exercise itself? So I’m thinking that, for now, any effects are just coincidental, though I do think that I’ll keep it up even after this week. (And a week from now I think the lesson will be a second part of that; apparently there are 5 parts, though we don’t get to the other parts until year 2 of the program.)

One other thing I’ve noticed is that my chest feels tighter than other parts of my body. So I’m thinking I should try to regularly work in the heart exercises. As a reminder to myself for that, the sequence is: 1) static hands; 2) hands moving out; 3) hands moving like bicycle; 4) lotus mudra.

Not much else particularly to report. I’m moving to a different project at work which means that I have fewer long meetings every week, so it will be harder to find two meetings during the week where it’s reasonable for me to do silk reeling during them. But the local COVID rate has fallen significantly recently, so I think I’m going to start going to Saturday Tai Chi, which should make up for that.